The Cronies, a band of five guys from
Logan, won first place and $7,000 at the SoJo Battle of the Bands on June 1.

“We're
still a pretty young band; we just really want to find out what we love to play
as a band and what people like to listen to,” said guitarist Daniel Burt.

Lead singer Kendall Geertsen and drummer
Shane Wegner met at a party when they were at Skyview High School and decided
to start a band with Burt, bass player, Tyler Barnard and guitarist Spencer
Felix in December of 2014. In February 2015, they had their first Battle of the
Bands competition and have continued playing shows and competitions since with
all doing two-year missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Geertsen said that one of the unique
aspects of the band is that they’re not just instrumentalists.

“We're
all singers; that's one of the cool things about our band: We all can sing
pretty well,” said Geertsen.

In the six months since they’ve come
back together, they’ve played every venue and audience possible, which brought
them to South Jordan. They also spent that time defining their sound.

“We’ve
spent a lot of time over the last six months really developing our sound and
exactly what kind of pop alternative rock it is,” said Wegner.

The band has a catalog of covers that
they perform as well as original songs that each member of the band has a hand
in writing. All the songs played in the SoJo Battle of the Bands came from each
member.

“Everyone
in the band has very unique influences and are very diverse, but at the same
time we have our main influences that kind of crossover with each other,” said
Wegner.

Bands like Walk the Moon, Imagine Dragons, Coldplay, The
Beatles, Bruno Mars and John Mayer are some of their heaviest influences that
they aspire to write like.

The band has plans to play several shows over the next
couple of months, including the Loading Dock (445 South 400 West) in Salt Lake City on June 21; a show with Peanut Butter Octopus, who won the student
category at the SoJo Battle of the Bands; and heading to Colorado in August.

They also plan to turn some of their prize money into a
CD.

“Our main focus coming up this fall will be, now that we
have a little bit of funding, we can go spend in the studio with a producer and
hash out some of these original songs we've been writing,” said Burt.